Research advances from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program (IRP) often make headlines. Read the news releases that describe our most recent findings:
BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Sam Srisatta, a 20-year-old Florida college student, spent a month living inside a government hospital here last fall, playing video games and allowing scientists to document every morsel of food that went into his mouth.
From big bowls of salad to platters of meatballs and spaghetti sauce, Srisatta noshed his way through a nutrition study aimed at understanding the health effects of ultraprocessed foods, the controversial fare that now accounts for more than 70% of the U.S. food supply. He allowed The Associated Press to tag along for a day.
“Today my lunch was chicken nuggets, some chips, some ketchup,” said Srisatta, one of three dozen participants paid $5,000 each to devote 28 days of their lives to science. “It was pretty fulfilling.”
Examining exactly what made those nuggets so satisfying is the goal of the widely anticipated research led by National Institutes of Health nutrition researcher Kevin Hall.
“What we hope to do is figure out what those mechanisms are so that we can better understand that process,” Hall said.
Pregnant women who experienced financial, emotional, or other personal stress in the year before their delivery had an increased chance of having a stillbirth, say researchers who conducted a National Institutes of Health network study.
Infectious disease researcher and clinician, Harvey J. Alter, M.D., chief of clinical studies and associate director of research in the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, has been selected to receive the 2013 prestigious Canada Gairdner International Award at the conclusion of the Gairdner National Program events on Oct. 24, 2013 in Toronto.
NIH study indicates reverse impulses clear useless information, prime brain for learning
When the mind is at rest, the electrical signals by which brain cells communicate appear to travel in reverse, wiping out unimportant information in the process, but sensitizing the cells for future sensory learning, according to a study of rats conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
Scientists may be better able to study how heavy drinking damages the liver using a new mouse model of alcohol drinking and disease developed by researchers from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The model incorporates chronic and binge drinking patterns to more closely approximate alcoholic liver disease in humans than any existing method. A report of the new model appears in the March issue of the journal Nature Protocols.
More people are meeting recommended goals in the three key markers of diabetes control, according to a study conducted and funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A new study describes the pattern of risk for one form of cancer, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), that has risen over the past three decades for adults who have previously been treated with chemotherapy for other forms of cancer, notably non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
A protein known to regulate iron levels in the body has an unexpectedly important role in preventing a form of high blood pressure that affects the lungs, and in stabilizing the concentration of red cells in blood, according to a study in mice by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
Soldiers preoccupied with threat at the time of enlistment or with avoiding it just before deployment were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in a study of Israeli infantrymen. Such pre-deployment threat vigilance and avoidance, interacting with combat experience and an emotion-related gene, accounted for more than a third of PTSD symptoms that emerged later, say National Institutes of Health scientists, who conducted the study in collaboration with American and Israeli colleagues.
An immune system protein normally found in semen appears to enhance the spread of HIV to tissue from the uterine cervix, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
NIH-funded consortium finds connection between lipoprotein(a) and valve calcification
A newly identified genetic variant doubles the risk of calcium buildup in the heart’s aortic valve. Calcium buildup is the most common cause of aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the aortic valve that can lead to heart failure, stroke, and sudden cardiac death.
